A mass stabbing at a Chinese train station has left 28 people dead and 113 injured in a ‘‘violent terrorist attack’’, state media says.

Victims described knife-wielding attackers dressed in black bursting into Kunming railway station and slashing indiscriminately.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for ‘‘all-out efforts’’ in the investigation and for the attackers to be punished ‘‘in accordance with the law’’, the official news agency Xinhua said.

A woman reacts, at the crime scene outside the railway station. Photo: AP

Beijing’s top security official was heading to the scene.

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The bloody assault, which happened at around 9.20pm local time, ‘‘was an organised, premeditated violent terrorist attack’’ carried out by ‘‘unidentified knife-wielding people’’, Xinhua reported, citing authorities.

Police shot dead five of the attackers at the train station in southwestern Yunnan province, Xinhua reported, and are ‘‘chasing the rest’’.

Yunnan has no history of violent attacks, and it was not immediately clear who carried out the attack, or what motivated it.

A knife victim named Yang Haifei, who was wounded in the chest and back, told Xinhua that he had been buying a train ticket when the attackers approached and had tried to escape with the crowd.

‘‘I saw a person come straight at me with a long knife and I ran away with everyone,’’ he said, while others ‘‘simply fell on the ground’’.

Police stand near luggage left at the ticket office after a group of armed men attacked people at Kunming railway station, Yunnan province. Photo: Reuters

Some who had escaped were desperately looking for missing loved ones.

‘‘I can’t find my husband, and his phone went unanswered,’’ Yang Ziqing was quoted by Xinhua as saying.

She said she had been waiting for her train to Shanghai ‘‘when a knife-wielding man suddenly came at them’’.

Officers sealed off a wide area around the station, it added, while Xinhua said police were questioning people at the site.

The attackers were dressed in similar black clothing, the official China News Service said, citing eyewitnesses.

‘‘A group of men carrying weapons burst into the train station plaza and the ticket hall, stabbing whoever they saw,’’ it said.

State broadcaster CCTV called the incident a ‘‘terrorist attack’’ on its Weibo account.

China’s top security official Meng Jianzhu would travel to Kunming to oversee its handling, CCTV said, while President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang sent condolences to the victims and their families.

Photos posted on Sina Weibo showed blood spattered across the station floor and medical staff crouching over bodies lying on the ground, although the authenticity of the images could not be verified.